Judo and dancesport

The 2nd Cebu City All-Whitebelt Judo Championships takes place this weekend at Robinson’s Place.

I met with lawyer Vicente Fernandez II late Tuesday as part of the preparations of the Philippine Amateur Judo Association (PAJA) Cebu Chapter, which he heads, for the event.

Vic showed me a long list of participants most especially for the minus 60 kilograms category, which will be played on Sunday.

The event starts on Saturday at 1 o’clock in the afternoon with the competition for the heavier weight classes and the women’s category.

A formal opening ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. to be followed by the championship matches then the awarding ceremony.

The schedule on Sunday will start earlier as matches would commence at 10 in the morning and the championship matches should be held by 4 p.m. due to the huge number of entries for the lighter weight classes.

Last year, over a hundred players were assembled at the Guadalupe Sports Complex.  This time, thanks to Robinson’s Place for allowing judo to return to its mall, we shall have more people getting a real feel of what judo action is.

The tournament has also been made possible with the support of the Cebu City Sports Commission.

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Weekends are for my children and I’m happy that they too are interested in the stuff that I also have to do.

Last Saturday afternoon, with my son and daughter in tow, I went to the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino Pacific Grand Ballroom to witness Dancesport sa Sugbo and 2nd Cebu IDSF Open.

While I have been to many dancesport events for the past eight years (yes, that’s how long I have been following dancesport even before it was this popular), watching the couples sway at the dancefloor is always an exhilarating experience.

Can you just imagine how exciting it can get when you have some of the world’s best dancers performing?  If you do then you must have been there are the Waterfront too.

Unfortunately I could not stay as long as I wanted, but a very happy Edward Hayco, director of Team Cebu City Dancesport, sent me a text message about the success of the event and how Cebu has done it again.

Edward has played a major role to make all of these happen and with the support of his wife Eleanor and everyone in the dancesport community of Cebu, we did it again.

I’m so proud of you guys!

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MILESTONE: Though he’s already back in the Land Down Under, I still would like to greet my good friend Graeme MacKinnon a very happy birthday.  Graeme calls Cebu as his second home and spent a lot of years here helping football grow.

Your efforts haven’t gone to waste mate and you’ll be proud to see what your players from M.Lhuillier and Balls are now doing.